I got the following email this morning from a young woman named Elizabeth Hagen.

Hello Ms Gorin,
I’m a graduate journalism student doing a radio story on last month’s ICTY sentencing of Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac and the reactions of the Serbian and Croat communities in NYC. Croatians here have protested outside the UN when the two were sentenced, and will be following up with another demonstration soon. I have been in touch with one of the organizers and have also spoken to Serbian, former Yugoslav-Army soldiers who were pushed out of Krajina in 1995.

I’m writing to ask if you know female Serbian survivors of Oluja living in New York City whom I could approach. I would be very grateful for any help.

After I replied to Elizabeth, she wrote the following: “I’m extremely interested in this area. I also think this has the potential to be really a unique story, because it complicates what we usually hear about the Balkan war narrative…”

It’s quite rare indeed to meet an American journalist who is not only interested in the area but interested in the complicated version rather than the concocted one. So if anyone can direct her toward a survivor or two or three, please contact Elizabeth at